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human nature, it is no diminution to a man's good sense or judgment to be found in an error, provided he is willing to retract it. He acts with the fame freedom and liberty as before: whoever be his monitor, it is his own good fenfe and judg ment that ftill guides him; which thines to great advantage in thus directing him againft the bias of vanity and felf-opinion. And in thus changing his fentiments, he only acknowledges that he is not, what no man ever was, incapable of being miftaken. In fhort, it is more merit, and an argument of a more excellent mind, for a man freely to retract when he is in the wrong, than to be overbearing and pofitive when he is in the right *.

A man then must be willing to know himself before he can know himself. He

muft open his eyes, if he defires to fee; yield to evidence and conviction, though

it

* Ει τις με ελέγξαι, και παράτησαι μοι, οτι εκ ορθώς υπολαμβάνω η πρασσω, δυναται, χαίρων μεταθήσομαι ζήτω γαρ την αλήθειαν υφ ης εδεις τι ωποτε εβλαβη βλάπτεται δε Ο επιμένων επι της εαυτώ απατης και αγνοιας. M. Aur. Lib. 6. § 21.—If any one can convince me that I am wrong in any point of fentiment or practice, I will alter it ruith all my heart: For it is truth I feek; and that can burt nobody. It is only perfifting in error or ignorance that

can burt us.

it be at the expence of his judgment, and to the mortification of his vanity.

CHAP. VI.

To be fenfible of our falfe Knowledge, a good Step to Self-Knowledge.

VI. "WOULD you know yourself,

"take heed and guard a

gainst falfe knowledge."

See that the light that is within you be not darkness; that your favourite and leading principles be right. Search your furniture, and fee what you have to unlearn. For oftentimes there is as much wifdom in cafting off fome knowledge which we have, as in acquiring that which we have not; which perhaps was what made Themiftocles reply, when one offered to teach him the art of memory, that he had much rather he would teach him the art of forgetfulness.

A fcholar that hath been all his life collecting of books, will find in his library at laft a great deal of rubbish; and as his taste alters, and his judgment improves, he will throw out a great many as trash and lumber, which, it may be, he once valued and paid dear for, and replace

them

them with fuch as are more folid and useful. Juft fo fhould we deal with our understandings; look over the furniture of the mind; feparate the chaff from the wheat, which are generally received into it together; and take as much pains to forget what we ought not to have learned, as to retain what we ought not to forget. To read froth and trifles all our life, is the way always to retain a flashy and juvenile turn; and only to contemplate our firft (which is generally our worst) knowledge, cramps the progress of the understanding, and is a great hinderance to a true felf-knowledge. In fhort, would we improve the understanding to the valuable purposes of felf-knowledge, we must take as much care what books we read, as what company we keep.

"The pains we take in books or arts, "which treat of things remote from the "ufe of life, is a bufy idlenefs. If I ftu"dy (fays Montaigne) it is for no other "fcience than what treats of the know"ledge of myself, and instructs me how "to live and die well *."

It is a comfortless fpeculation, and a plain proof of the imperfection of the hu

Rule of Life, pag. 82, 90.

man

man understanding, that, upon a narrow fcrutiny into our furniture, we obferve a great many things which we think we know, but do not; and a great many things which we do know, but ought not. That of the knowledge which we have been all our lives collecting, a good deal of it is mere ignorance, and a good deal of it worse than ignorance. To be fenfible of which is a very neceffary fstep to felf-acquaintance *.

CHAP. VII.

Self-Infpection peculiarly neceffary upon fome particular Occafions.

VII. "WOULD you know yourself, you must very carefully "attend to the frame and emotions of "your mind under fome particular inci"dents and occafions."

you

Some fudden accidents which befal when the mind is most off its guard, will better difcover its fecret turn and prevailing difpofition, than much greater events you are prepared for. e. g.

(1.) Confider how you behave under

* See Part i, chap. xiii. fin.

any

any sudden affronts or provocations from "A fool's wrath is presently

men.

"known," Prov. xii. 16. i. e. a fool is presently known by his wrath.

If your anger be foon kindled, it is a fign that fecret pride lies lurking in the heart, which, like gunpowder, takes fire at every spark of provocation that lights upon it. For whatever may be owing to a natural temper, it is certain that pride is the chief caufe of frequent and wrathful resentments: For pride and anger are as nearly allied as humility and meeknefs. "Only by pride cometh contention," Prov. xiii. 10. And a man would not know what mud lay at the bottom of his heart, if provocation did not ftir it up.

Athenodorus the philofopher, by reafon of his old age, begged leave to retire from the court of Auguftus, which the emperor granted him; and as Athenodorus was taking his leave of him, "Remember, "(faid he) Cæfar, whenever you are

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angry, you fay or do nothing, before "you have repeated the four-and-twenty "letters of the alphabet to yourself." Whereupon Cæfar catching him by the hand, I have need (fays he) of your prefence

3

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